by Michael Bloor
[first published in Literally Stories, March 6th, 2025]
Drummossie, Aberdeenshire – January, 1976.
Because I couldn’t afford the necessary welding repairs to my Morris van til the end of the month, I was getting a daily lift into Aberdeen, with my friend and neighbour, Stewart. Aberdeenshire is the cold shoulder of Scotland and it was a hard winter. Normally, if you’re getting a lift into work, it would be churlish to object to push-starting your friend’s car. But, in a week of snow and ice, push-starting a VW beetle first thing in the morning involves a major (nay, crippling) effort. So, come Friday, I was pleading with Stewart: we would have to replace his starter motor that weekend. Stewart readily agreed, little knowing the pain and humiliation that would ensue.
We knew where there was a wrecked, abandoned VW, beside some derelict farm steadings a few miles away. So, on the Saturday morning, we set off (with me push-starting) to remove the wreck’s starter motor. The snowplough had cleared the overnight snow off the public road, but the track up to the wreck was impassable. So, although we’d brought an old car battery with us to test the starter motor on the wreck, we left that battery in Stewart’s car and struggled up the track to the wreck with just the tool box.
It was a troublesome business getting the starter motor out of the wreck in the freezing weather, but eventually we accomplished it and headed back to Drummossie (with me push-starting). Once home, we immediately tested the starter motor: nothing, a dud.
From the phonebox down the road (after I’d push-started the VW), Stewart then phoned the local scrappie, happily named Ian Grime. Stewart was dismayed at the price Grime wanted for his second-hand starter motor. Admittedly, it was a starter-motor/solenoid combined assembly, but we would still ourselves have to take it out of the scrapped VW in Grime’s yard. Stewart not only couldn’t afford it, he also felt that Grime was taking unfair advantage of his being the only scrappie for miles around.
Then Stewart came up with a plan: I was impressed, really impressed – it both secured the starter motor and struck a blow against Monopoly Capital. We would smuggle the newly-acquired dud starter motor into Grime’s scrapyard in Stewart’s big toolbox. We’d then take Grime’s starter motor out of the scrapyard VW and put that in the toolbox. Stewart would take the dud starter motor into Grime’s hut for testing, prior to payment, while I smuggled Grime’s starter motor out of the yard in the toolbox. Brilliant.
I push-started the VW and we headed off to the scrapyard, though the wind was strengthening and blowing drifts of snow off the fields and into the road. Not without difficulty, we made it to the yard. Practised now, we quickly disconnected Grime’s starter motor and switched it with our dud. I bore off the prize in the toolbox to the safety of Stewart’s VW, while Stewart went off with the dud to Grime’s hut.
I then hurried back to the hut, anxious not to miss Stewart’s secret triumph. He showed surprising thespian talent. Grime was messing about on the hut floor with a set of jump leads and a knife, scratching away at the corroded terminals of the dud starter motor. As I entered the hut, Stewart turned to me, his face a mask of horror: ‘Disaster, Boy Wonder. It’s a fuckin’ dud.’
I did my best to follow Stewart’s dramatic lead: ‘Fuckin’ ‘ell, Batman. Now what are we goin’ to do?’
At that moment, the dud starter motor on the floor sprang noisily to life. Dud, no more. Indeed, what were we going to do now?